


Three Views

by KChasm



Series: Superimpose [2]
Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: F/M, Maribelle disapproves, Sully is there but basically only for a line, This Robin is pretty unsociable, but you'd know that if you read the other works in this series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-07-24 13:54:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16176428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KChasm/pseuds/KChasm
Summary: Robin and Lissa are courting. There are opinions.





	Three Views

**Author's Note:**

> My entry for day 1 of Smooch-tober ("kiss on the hand"), completed on day 3 of Smooch-tober.
> 
> Theoretically, I should have Smooch-tober over by December.

Chrom doesn’t know what to think of them, Robin and Lissa.

Of course, Robin’s a good person. He knows that, even if he can be standoffish, sometimes. And as a strategist and tactician, he’s _brilliant_. Under his guidance, the Shepherds have emerged victorious again and again from under uncertain odds. If it were his talent in troop movement alone that Chrom were judging Robin by now, there’d be no question where he’d stand.

Only, of course, it isn’t. Only, of course, there is the problem (problem?) that Robin is currently—courting his sister.

“More like _he’s_ the one being courted,” says Sully, carefully cool-eyed. She stands at the side of the tent, unnaturally, like she’s itching to displace her weight and lean against it even with the certainty of falling in instead. She’s only standing there—listening to his request that she stand there, and look like there is a conversation between them—because it’s the perfect position to watch them from—Robin and Lissa, Chrom and Sully both. Chrom looks over Sully’s shoulder, just off the tip of her ear, and tries not to turn his head to give it any more away.

(Robin’s found himself a tree—tall and thick enough to rest his back against like he and Sully wish they could, but with foliage light enough to keep in the sun. Or he might have been able to, before Lissa’s casting shade of her own. She’s standing square in his sun, talking, gesturing animatedly about something Chrom can’t hear, and more and more Robin’s attention turns visibly from the tome in his lap. Then Lissa makes one more strong-flung motion, pointing downward as if there’s a passage to highlight—

Chrom sees the change in Robin’s stance, even with Robin sitting as he is. The tensing of his shoulders, like a man coming to the knot at the end of his patience. And then, in a quick, oddly _graceful_ motion, he grabs Lissa’s hand, tugs it—just enough to unbalance her, though not to give her fall—and presses a kiss to its back.

He still half expects Lissa to to redden, to explode in gesticulation, to yank her hand back, at least. She doesn’t. She says something more, smiling—laughs—and then turns herself round to sit at Robin’s side, pushing into the folds of his robe.

He doesn’t know when that changed.)

* * *

Maribelle knows very well what to think of them, Lissa and _Robin_.

She’d give voice to it, but a lady doesn’t dare use such words, even in private. At first she’d been pleased—her dearest friend, lucky enough in love to have her affections returned! And if Robin _did_ have his flaws of personality—acid tongue, a barely restrained haughtiness—at the very least she didn’t sense dishonesty among them. With assistance and time, she was sure, those rough edges of his could be sanded away.

What a fool she’d been—a simple, accursed fool!

She had misread him—she would admit that freely now. Her suspicions had all been in the way of _ambition_ —of some would-be suitor, seducing Lissa to turn her princess-ship to his own advantage—and, seeing nothing of this sort in Robin’s behavior, she had stood to the side and allowed the foul romance to bloom. She hadn’t understood, not before it had become too late, that there might be motives just as dastardly as ambition.

(She watches, furious, as Lissa smiles and points and laughs, a golden bird wandering between the predator’s claws. She sees the moment those claw close—the decision made in Robin’s shoulders, the deliberateness in the motions he makes following. Someone less versed in duplicity might read the kiss to Lissa’s hand as _sweet_ —a gentleman’s gesture, honest and impromptu.

Maribelle, of course, knows better. She has spent enough time deciphering the false manners and doublespeak of noble society to read the truth beneath—how the grasping of Lissa’s hand is too quick, too clean to be actually unplanned, how the press of lips lasts just a _little_ too long.

He mocks affection, even as he pretends it. What his goal is in this, Maribelle can’t guess, past that it cannot be benign.

This will culminate soon—she’s certain of it. All she can do is comfort Lissa the best she can when it does.)

* * *

Lissa gets Robin. Really, she does!

She didn’t at first. All she thought of him, after they picked him, was that he was a little pretty, yeah, but mostly that he was a big ol’ curmudgeon. Which he is! Both of those. But also more than that, believe it or not.

She’s pretty sure it’s “not,” as far as most of the Shepherds are concerned. That’s fine. More for herself.

But there’s a trick to Robin, and the trick to Robin is this: He’s a _prideful_ curmudgeon. Stupidly prideful. Like—the time he got sick. It’d be one thing if he’d hidden himself away so that nobody’d had to see his stuffy nose.

Instead, he spent a week stumbling around camp half-unconscious, angrily denying he was anything less than fine, and refusing to lie down till she suggested that maybe it was too loud, out here, with everyone else being everyone else, and did he want some help with battle plans back in his tent? Which he did. Obviously.

(And _that’s the trick_ —Lissa doesn’t know what Robin’s life was like, before her brother found him in that field, but she thinks—she’s pretty sure, and it’s _sad_ —that no one ever told Robin it was okay for him to be weak, sometimes. Once she got that about him, it was easier to see—how he couldn’t say “thank you” without wrapping it in an insult, or apologize without sarcasm.

He can’t even be _happy_ without trying to hide it. He kisses her hand, a lot longer than he needs to, making a show of it, and when he’s done looks up at her sullenly, as if the task has taken so much out of him. She can read the expression clear on his face: “Are you satisfied _now_?”

But when she sits against him, he leans into her, just a bit, the shifting invisible beneath that oversized coat of his, and if he asked her then, she’d say yes.)


End file.
